


Some Superhero, Some Fairytale Bliss

by Rysler



Category: Alias (Comics), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol Withdrawal, Canada, Coldplay References, F/F, Homesickness, Lots of Killgrave discussion, Past Rape/Non-con, Stranded, Survival, discussions of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 03:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12548020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rysler/pseuds/Rysler
Summary: Jessica rescues Trish from a kidnapper. They ended up stranded in a farmhouse near the Arctic Circle, without access to communications, transportation, or alcohol.





	Some Superhero, Some Fairytale Bliss

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after Jessica Jones Season One, but before The Defenders. Incorporates some comic book lore from Alias.

The man lay dead at Trish’s feet. 

After the thud of him hitting the ground, all Jessica could hear was the sound of her own breathing. Trish was silent. She seemed unaware of the cellar around them, the tomb under a Canadian farmhouse that Jessica had tracked Trish to. 

Jessica took in the man’s limpness, his absence of life. She wondered if Trish knew his name. If she’d known, before she hit his chest a little too hard and stopped his heart. She hadn’t meant to. It had happened so fast. 

“Ruben,” Trish said. She rolled back her shoulders and looked at Jessica standing where Ruben had stood for six days. 

Jessica nudged Ruben’s shoulder with her boot. The shoulder gave a little. No blood pumping there. She finally looked up at Trish, squarely, ready to accept whatever had happened in the cellar. 

“I’m sorry?” Jessica asked.

Trish shook her head. “He--It’s okay. It’s fine.”

Ruben’s body was between Jessica and the chair Trish was handcuffed to. Her ankles and wrists were in regular handcuffs, as if she couldn’t break free of that. They must have had some other sway over her. The chair was the only thing in the cellar, which was illuminated by a single lightbulb. Made just for Trish, it seemed like.

Ruben must have had some sort of control. Jessica’s stomach turned. Or else they didn’t normally keep Trish so bound. No marks on her wrists. But the smell of sweat and feces and cellar mold permeated the air. Trish’s hair looked gray. 

Gray after a week of being a hostage, with no access to dye-jobs? 

Trish couldn’t be that old. Jessica knew she wasn’t, either. The things that had made them feel old, the ruin and the crime and the death and abuse, those things had had been mere moments. 

They still had the remnants of their youth, clinging to them even in this dirt room. 

“Trish,” she said. She knelt and dragged Ruben out of the way. 

Trish’s dull eyes lifted toward hers.

Jessica knelt and picked the locks on Trish’s ankle cuffs and then wrist cuffs. The metal clattered when it hit the ground.

A tear rolled down Trish’s cheek. 

Jessica brushed it away. She put her hands on Trish’s shoulders, and leaned close enough to kiss Trish’s forehead, her cheek, her lips. Fever greeted her, Trish’s hot skin under her touch. 

Trish wrapped herself around Jessica and didn’t cry, didn’t make a sound. 

“Trish? Were there any other men? Any others?” 

“Edgar.”

“He brought me in the chopper.”

“What?”

“Not willingly. He was surprised to see me. Even more surprised that I knew the destination.”

“He was the one in charge. What did he want?”

“Want?”

“With me,” Trish said. 

“Oh. He ransomed the station,” Jessica said. She disentangled herself from Trish and got up. “Five hundred thousand dollars.”

“So that’s what I’m worth.”

_They negotiated down from a million_. Jessica kept that to herself. She helped Trish to her feet. 

Helped her walk to the narrow wooden staircase that led out of the cellar. Noted that Trish wobbled. She’d never climbed these stairs before. Trish had gone down and never gone up. 

“Why me?” Trish asked. “They had to have known that you’d--”

“Jessica Jones? The superhero that doesn’t save people? That selfish drunk? They gambled. They lost. Fuckers.”

Trish suddenly grinned. Her eyes were still dull, but her step was lighter. She paused, on the threshold of the door. “Where are we?”

“Some house in the middle of nowhere.”

“Upstate New York?” Trish stood on her own now, and kept her hand on Jessica’s arm.

“Um. Canada?”

“What?” Trish filled with the alertness of alarm. Her grip tightened painfully.

“Near the Arctic Circle?”

Trish swallowed. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s why I needed the helicopter. You know. No real roads.”

Trish’s gaze darted around. “Where is it?”

“Um.”

“Jess! The helicopter, where is it?” Trish was alive now, vibrant with the fever.

“Edgar pushed me out.” 

“You?”

“He knows more about piloting a helicopter than I do,” Jessica said. “And doors, and stuff.”

Trish let go of Jessica and pushed through the opening. She scrambled through the house and out the front door. She stumbled onto a porch surrounded by white. White in every direction.

Jessica joined her. A contrasting black dot. 

“How do we get home?” Trish asked.

“Let’s go south,” Jessica said.

Trish huffed, and looked south, but didn’t seem to have the strength to do more. 

Jessica took Trish’s arm and led her gently back into the house. She deposited Trish at the kitchen table, where they were surrounded by linoleum and spiders in the corners. Empty cans stained with tomato sauce and chili remnants decorated the sink. A half-loaf of bread sat bagged on the counter. 

“There’s got to be a phone,” Jessica said.

“Ruben didn’t have a cell phone, so yeah,” Trish said. She huffed again, with more gusto.

Jessica checked her own cell phone. No bars. Searching… Searching. She tucked it away, then looked around.

A rotary phone was mounted on the wall by the door. She lifted the handle. “No signal.” She dialed 9-1-1 anyway.

“It’s 9-9-9,” Trish said.

“Right.” Jessica dialed 9-9-9. “Nothing. Shit. Hello?” she said into the receiver.

“Maybe Edgar landed the helicopter and took out the lines.”

“Or maybe they just froze.”

Trish shifted, looked Jessica in the eyes. 

Jessica shrugged. She turned on the kitchen sink. Water ran. She turned it to hot. 

It got lukewarm.

“Jess.” Trish’s voice cracked on the word. Tears streaked the dirt on Trish’s cheeks. “I need to take a shower. Or something. Please.”

“Right.” Jessica moved back to Trish’s side. “Let’s try upstairs.”

***

They found a master bedroom on the second floor, and two smaller rooms, one with a loom, the other completely empty. Jessica guarded the door of the en-suite as Trish showered. She hoped the water was more than lukewarm. 

They’d found mold-free clothes in the bedroom. A tee-shirt and heavy winter pants that would fit with a belt. 

Trish cried, off and on, her voice occasionally rising above the running water. 

Jessica tried not to hear. Then strained to hear. The sounds of the water and the tears echoed in an otherwise silent house. No creaking, no wind, no footsteps. Just a void of sound. The only life was inside the bathroom, locked away with a hydra at the gates.

She’d missed Trish for six days, had panicked and searched and made it to Canada, and now Trish was with her, but the knot in Jessica’s stomach wouldn’t go away. Trish seemed broken. Jessica wasn’t good at fixing things. She had no idea what to do next, how to take care of Trish or find a way out without her phone or her computer. She would give anything to call Malcolm or even Hogarth and beg on her hands and knees to help Trish. 

Jessica clenched and unclenched her fists. This was time she should spend searching for a way out. Looking for a radio or a car. Doing something with Ruben. Looking for a drink. 

Not standing statue like an asshole. 

The water turned off. There was a loud squeak from the pipes, and then more silence. Jessica’s ears felt full of cotton. She rubbed at them, remembering Trish’s dull eyes from the cellar. Trish had seemed beyond pain. Jessica’s was just getting started. 

The door opened. Trish stood in her baggy shirt with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked clean and alluring and tall again. 

“Did you bring makeup?” Jessica asked.

“No, why?” 

“Nothing,” Jessica said.

Trish smiled, radiantly and unguarded. “Jessica Jones, are you saying I look pretty?”

Jessica scowled.

Trish chuckled. “I had a good cry. But you freed me. Let’s search the house.”

“You can’t possibly be all better.”

Trish sobered. “I’m not. But, I knew what was going to happen and it happened. It’s okay, Jessica.” 

Jessica sighed. “Top to bottom or bottom to top?” She stuck her hands in her pockets. 

Trish cringed. “Definitely top to bottom.”

“Maybe not so okay after all.”

“Shut up,” Trish said.

***

The attic was empty. Not even an old Christmas tree had been stashed there. Jessica had expected family photos in aged trunks, or machine guns packed in straw, but finding only pink insulation was disheartening.

“Who even lives here?” she muttered.

“I’m guessing no one, Jessica.” Trish’s tone was sharp. She sneezed from the dust. 

“Fuck this.”

So they were back in the bedroom, finding things. Soap, shampoo, a hair dryer, men’s clothes, a shaving kit. But nothing useful, like a map. Or a satellite phone.

Jessica gazed out the bedroom window at the snow. The white was fading into gray as the sun set behind them. 

Nothing was out there.

The lack of noise, too, was a continuing problem.

Jessica rubbed her forehead. “God, Trish, put on some music. I live in New York City, for fuck’s sake.”

“They tossed my phone back in the US,” Trish said. “Give me yours.”

Jessica handed it over. All the music on it was Trish’s, anyway, for emergencies. 

Like this one. She decided not to count how many emergencies there had been. 

Trish hit play. 

Coldplay began to sing, “I’ve been reading books of old…”

“Ugh, anything but this.”

Trish grinned. “Too personal?”

“I just don’t like Coldplay.”

Trish snorted.

“Okay, or songs about Spider-Man. That doesn’t make me a criminal.”

“Whatever,” Trish said. “He’s your friend.”

“He’s not--”

Jessica was cut off by. “Despacito” coming through the phone’s expensive, miniature high-end speakers. Trish set the phone on the bed.

Jessica resumed staring out the window. 

Trish tugged her arm. “Come on.”

“Come where?”

“Dance with me.” 

Trish held Jessica by limp wrists, jiggling her about as Trish danced, more lavishly, and mouthed the words. 

Jessica laughed when Trish spun her around. 

“That’s the spirit.” 

“Fine.” Jessica did her impression of boogeying. 

She was used to dancing with Trish. Trish liked to do it when she was bored, or watching TV. Some Madonna-esque theory of exercise and freedom that Jessica never paid attention to. 

Trish wrapped her arms around Jessica from behind and purred “Despacito” in her ear.

Jessica twisted away, and facing Trish, yanked her close. They danced together, slinking up and down, enough to make any chaperone blush. No worries there, out in the tundra. What was that Melissa Etheridge song? 

_There’s nowhere to go, you might as well scream?_

Trish laughed in her ear, and then Jessica felt the brush of lips against her neck. 

Then they spun apart and ended up pointing at each other, mugging faces as the track ended.

P!nk came on. 

Jessica grabbed the phone and hit pause. “Do you sneak into my house and download the Top 40 every week?”

“It’s more...automated.”

“Great.”

Trish grinned. “Let’s search the kitchen again. I’m getting hungry.”

Bathing, laughing, eating. Trish was healing remarkably from her ordeal. Maybe she was well enough that Jessica could start asking questions.

Jessica gave it a try. “What did Ruben feed you?”

“An unbelievable amount of grilled cheese sandwiches. You can’t imagine the gas.” Trish winced. 

Jessica rolled her eyes. 

They walked down to the kitchen together. Thirteen steps. Unlucky. The kitchen was right where the left it. Untouched, unclean, silent. 

Jessica took a deep breath. “You make dinner. I’ll deal with—with Ruben.”

Trish nodded, turning away to look in cabinets. Her shoulders were shaking. Jessica wanted to rub them, to feel Trish calm under her fingers. But that would make the issue of Ruben linger. Fester. Better to get it over with before eating something.

***

Twilight had darkened the yard by the time Jessica deposited Ruben at the edge of a copse. Animals could feed on him. Or maybe he’d freeze until the spring thaw and feed the plants. She tried not to care.

But he looked pretty helpless. The rigor had come and gone. He slumped ungracefully, his face slack. His eyes closed. Like she was leaving a drunk sleeping it off in a snowbank. 

Something she would never do. 

She paced in front of him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t like killing. I don’t like any of this.” She took a breath, let out a visible stream of white. “I’m sure you were a great guy. You were just between me and Trish. You’re still human. I mean. I’m sure you’ll be missed, or something. Everyone should be missed.”

She turned away from him, back toward the house, which was lit up cheerily against the night. Trish would be playing ridiculous music and cooking Jessica’s favorite Italian. The TV would be on, showing some national disaster they were missing by being way out here in no man’s land.

She walked away from Ruben and didn’t look back.

***

Jessica rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. The bed creaked when she moved. She couldn’t tell if it was the middle of the night or edging toward morning. 

Trish slept beside her. They’d settled into the master bedroom, the warmest room in the house beside the kitchen. Trish didn’t have any covers on her. She’d acclimated so well that not being in a cellar was improvement enough for warmth.

Jessica was cold. She’d tried huddling against Trish’s heat, but that felt too much like letting her guard down. 

Trish snored lightly.

Somebody had to stay awake. In case Edgar came back, or whatever bullshit the unknown could bring to two women sleeping. Nothing was really safe in Jessica’s world. 

The phone, plugged into the wall, since Jessica had learned after many bad situations to always carry a charger with her, clicked back to the beginning of the album. Trish had picked it out. She missed New York, too.

The voices emanating from the phone’s speakers were both muffled and shrill. Only when the singing start did the words, too familiar, slip into Jessica’s awareness.

_No one mourns the wicked. No one cries. No one lays a lily on their grave…_

Was that about Ruben or Edgar? Or her? She whispered, “Of all the musicals you could have picked, Trish.” 

It was still preferable to sleeping in the vast Arctic silence that surrounded them. 

Jessica flicked on the laser pointer she’d found and made a red smiley face on the ceiling. It faded after milliseconds. Like her phone, it was a useless electronic device she had power over. “Whoopee,” she said.

Trish murmured. 

Despite the dark, they’d risked walking around the circumference of their farm. The explorations further afield had revealed that the power lines, like the land telephone lines, had been cut. The electricity and heat were running on gasoline from a generator with a fuel tank bigger than Jessica’s bedroom. Who knew when it had been last filled. Luck was not often on Jessica’s side.

Tomorrow, they were going to walk in opposite directions, hoping to find another house. A family. A paranoid man with a shotgun. Anything.

The plan terrified her. 

The phone sang, “...Goodness knows the wicked's lives are lonely.”

“Fuck you,” Jessica said.

“What?” Trish mumbled.

“Nothing. Nevermind.” Jessica rolled onto her side and put her hand on Trish’s back. 

Trish mewed some sort of contented “Thank you.”

Jessica sighed. Her hand was shaking. Trish hadn’t noticed yet.

And her headache was killing her.

Literally, maybe. 

Jessica squeezed her eyes shut and imagined four ounces of bourbon. The sight of it, amber in a lowball glass. The smell, sickly sweet, the taste, burning and full. 

If she concentrated hard enough, the headache would ebb for a moment. Then she would let go and let the pain return. 

_...They reap only what they've sown._

Jessica rolled onto her back again, getting away from Trish. She devoted her night to watchfulness, and to not throwing up, or crying, or starting to scream. 

***

Breakfast was eggs and toast, washed down by black coffee, accompanied by a splitting headache. Jessica stabbed the bridge of her nose to keep from stabbing Trish, who had cooked for her. Who might wander out into a snowbank and die.

“I love you,” Jessica said.

Trish gave her a bright smile.

“Maybe I should do the patrolling today,” Jessica said. “I can leap, and stuff. And you can…”

“Play house? Jessica. I got us into this mess--”

“You did not get us into this mess by getting kidnapped. That is not how it works. You’re the victim. You’re innocent and--”

“Jess!”

Jessica closed her mouth. She squeezed her nose harder.

“I will go west and you will go east and neither one of us will die,” Trish said. 

Jessica nodded.

Trish squinted. “Are you all right?”

“Headache.”

“When’s the last time you had a drink?” 

Trish tried to put her hand on Jessica’s forehead, but Jessica squirmed away.

“Um. Yesterday morning? Toronto airport bar. Edgar was in a hurry. I should have taken a few of those airplane bottles, but I didn’t want to be too wasted…”

“...to save me,” Trish said.

Jessica went to pour herself more coffee.

Trish’s hands settled on Jessica’s shoulders. “We’ll get through this.”

“Or else.”

***

Jessica jogged for two hours east across what seemed like ice, through pine forests. The trembling was worse. Her whole body shook now, buffeted by the wind of her own speed. She’d stopped to vomit twice. But she could run. She could keep running

She became dimly aware that the ground underneath her had changed.

Her “spidey-sense,” or whatever, made her turn back, jog a thousand feet, until she felt it again.

Not earth or wood or ice. Concrete. She was standing on something man-made.

She looked around cautiously. The trees swam and blurred. 

“Shit.” 

She sat down and closed her eyes. She counted down from 100. When she looked again, the trees were still somewhat indistinct, but she was in a definite clearing about 50 meters wide. A circle. 

She stood up, and then hopped up and down. Gently. Must remember the super-strength. 

The concrete was solid underfoot.

“Hey, Trish, I think I’m in an episode of _Lost._ ”

She got out her phone and typed in a few notes. She scanned the trees again.

They were gone, replaced by grinning demons.

“Oh. That can’t be good.”

She closed her eyes. The demons danced on the inside of her eyelids. Relying only on her sense of touch, she crept with tiny footsteps toward the outer edge of the circle. The concrete vanished.

She fell forward, onto rocks. “Ow.” Her jeans were torn but she didn’t bleed.

Sitting up, she looked back, and saw only a line of darkness separating the rocky earth from the tree line. She lifted her phone and took pictures.

“Hello, Jessica,” it whispered in her mind.

She clambered to her feet. The demons were dancing around the circle. A great sacrificial altar. The demons wanted her. 

“Ruben, Ruben. You killed Ruben.”

She studied the sky, and then looked for her footprints, and ran west. 

***

Jessica made it home before Trish. She made black coffee and drank a pot of it, and then took a lukewarm shower, trying to scald away the demons. They hadn’t followed her. She didn’t think.

When the water turned from warm to cold she turned it off and got out. She put on clean, oversized clothes, and made more coffee, but didn’t drink it, and waited.

The sky was turning dark when she heard Trish. Trish was singing.

_When you're too in love to let it go… If you never try you'll never know… Just what you're worth… Lights will guide you home._

Jessica sat at one end of the couch, shivering. 

“Jessica?” Trish said as she stomped into the kitchen.

“I made coffee,” Jessica said. She hugged herself, but it didn’t help. 

Trish came and sat on the coffee table. She touched Jessica’s forehead. “Hey.”

“I’m glad you came home. I couldn’t have--gone looking for you.”

“I know I pushed it. But I figured I could walk in a straight line, right? And I hadn’t hit any obstacles.”

“No trees?”

“Lots of trees.”

Jessica’s teeth clattered. 

“You made coffee?”

Jessica nodded.

Trish got up and got some, and fussed around the kitchen and the bathroom, and then came back with microwaved mugs of coffee for both of them. She sat on the couch instead of the coffee table, right up against Jessica, warm and solid.

Like human, not concrete.

“What did you find?” Trish asked.

“I don’t know.” Jessica got out her phone and handed it to Trish. “Pictures.”

Trish flipped through them.

“Do you see it? Do you see anything?” Jessica asked.

“Looks like a clearing made of concrete. And here, on this edge, an opening. Kept clean and clear. I think…”

“What? What do you think? Please tell me it’s real.”

“I think it’s a missile silo, Jessica.”

Jessica’s eyes filled with tears. Terror and relief warred inside her, twisting her into pieces that she was shaking apart.

Trish took Jessica into her arms. Kissed her brow. “Hey. I found a lake. Just an ordinary lake. But really big. Too big to go around. I walked southward for a couple hours. Hoping… But just a few abandoned buildings. I didn’t take any of the food or fuel, while we have our own. But...it’s a direction we could go in.”

Jessica swallowed the lump in her throat.

“No booze. I’m sorry.”

Jessica nodded, turning to press her face against Trish’s neck.

***

Trish managed to get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into both of them and coax Jessica into bed. Jessica muttered about demons and Ruben and settled into a restless sleep. Trish had talked her into taking aspirin they’d found, probably a hundred years old. Jessica had sweated through her clothes and had wet her pants. She was too inconsolate for another shower. 

Trish sat by the bed and thought about praying. Then she thought about vampires. The skin on her wrist, right where Jessica could bite, get blood and be whole and strong and immortal again, that skin was flawless. No white lines feather-painted, no jagged scars from cutting too deep. 

Jessica had saved her from that. When sticking fingers down her throat wasn’t enough. When boobs and full hips and teenage rebellion meant she couldn’t be Patsy anymore, and she couldn’t take how her mom couldn’t take it, Jessica had intervened. Jessica had built a wall around her and let her grow up halfway normal. College and boys and girls and a B. A. in Communications.

Jessica had given her that, and Trish would give her blood in return, would save her now. She’d been waiting for her chance since Jessica had shown back up in her life. Had muscles and brains and hearts and flawless fucking skin, because she’d never been brutalized--

Jessica screamed.

Jessica woke herself, yelling loud and shrill and incoherently. Superhero lungs making piercing, alto cries. Her eyes were wide open. She stared at nothing, and thrashed when Trish tried to touch her.

After an hour, the screaming became a shouted, “Stop!” “Stop!” over and over.

Trish’s headache pounded behind her eyes. 

Jessica had gone from writhing to paralyzation to curled up in a ball, hugging her knees.

“Stop!” 

Still loud, as if Jessica’s throat were super-powered too.

“Stop!”

As if Trish were doing anything at all. She’d almost stopped breathing.

“Stop!” 

Twenty long minutes crept by, the cries arrhythmic and unable to be counted as beats, and the shrieking became a crooning, and “Killgrave, no, don’t,” was added to the mix. 

The hundreds of times Jessica had never gotten to say it tumbled. The recesses of her mind that echoed and bounced around what Killgrave controlled, the protests that were also counting hours and minutes and seconds between commands. 

Trish’s blood ran cold. She gripped the arms of her chair. When Jessica’s mumbles fell incoherent, Trish made up her own words in her mind. “Why didn’t you save me?” “Why didn’t you look for me?” “Why didn’t you miss me?”

“Water.”

Trish nearly missed Jessica’s whispered word. Shaking herself into being, she brought Jessica water in a cup from the bathroom and helped her drink it, Jessica sitting up and wrinkling her nose and looking around.

Jessica handed back the glass to Trish and looked her in the eye. “His hands are all over me. All the time. He’s touching me every second. He’s inside my head, Trish.”

“I know.”

“I can’t stop it.”

“He’s not here, Jessica.” Trish looked into Jessica’s black eyes, and didn’t touch her.

“Can I die from screaming?” Jessica sounded almost hopeful.

“No. You won’t die, Jessica. I promise. I’m here.”

Jessica took a deep breath. She glanced out the window. Stars shone. She patted Trish’s hand. Trish held onto her fingers, and watched helplessly as Jessica cracked apart, opening again to release the sounds.

The wailing lasted all night.

***

Jessica woke up with screams on her lips, but only a quivering accompanied them. No sound. Trish was asleep in the chair next to the bed. She was a devastated mess of a human being. Hair unkempt and dull again, face streaked red and purple with crying, marks on her hands where she’d clawed them. 

Jessica squeezed her lips together, stilled them, and managed an, “I’m sorry, Trish,” before the chanting overtook her. “Birch Street, Higgins Drive, Cobalt Lane, Stop, Stop, Stop, Bitch Street…”

She got up and showered. 

The demons had retreated to her peripheral vision, a rainbow of mottled monster colors. Killgrave was front and center, complaining. Telling her everything that was wrong with her demeanor, her hair, her clothes. Her head ached. 

She went downstairs and put on coffee. While it percolated, she went to the porch. The air was blue and clear. The world was white with dark green vertical stripes meeting the horizon. She took off her shirt.

Then she shucked her pants and stretched out on the front lawn, on hard ice from an early fall snow that had never melted. It was cold, but not cold enough. She chopped at the ice with her hand, numbing her fingers, taking pieces of it and putting it on her body. Her nipples hardened. 

That was something. But the rest of her stayed the way it was.

The ice burned where it touched her. 

“Get that stuff off of you, Jessica,” Killgrave said.

Her body was trembling. 

“Stop!” Killgrave said.

She couldn’t stop. She was shaking all over. The white sky fell down and enveloped her and then the ice-burning was everywhere, even inside. She prayed it would push Killgrave out. 

Her eyes rolled back in her head. 

“Jessica!” 

Trish shouting in her ear. Didn’t Trish know she had a monster headache? 

“God, what?”

“You had a seizure.”

“I feel fine.”

“You had a seizure.”

“It’s just the withdrawal.” Jessica gazed up at the white sky. Frowned when Trish’s visage invaded. 

“Why are you out here naked on the ground?”

“If I couldn’t numb my mind, maybe I could numb my body. Make it all stop.”

“Does it hurt?”

“The ice burns. The other stuff… No. It makes me feel like death. Like a carcass thrown out in the trash. Like maggots crawling all over me. Like shame became corporeal and encased me in dust.”

“Jessica, I--”

“You left me.” Jessica got to her knees, facing Trish, who’d knelt down to help her.

“What?”

“You broke up with me. I went away. And then he--he--and you didn’t even look for me!”

“You’re right. I didn’t even know you were gone.”

Jessica blinked away tears. “Eight months.”

To Trish, it was that time between getting her first job at the station and Jessica showing up at her apartment, half-dead but smiling, saying, “I killed Killgrave.”  It was longer than eight months. Three years. Three years because Jessica had laughed at her, shunned her for wanting to be a celebrity again, for wanting to make a difference. Because Jessica had gone off to be a Hero, to make a Real Difference. 

And found Killgrave instead.

Jessica said, “I had to tell him. That no one loved me. That I loved no one. I could only protect you with hate. He wasn’t interested in hate. Whether I hated my ex-lover or the Mets, he wasn’t interested. He never even--” She laughed. “He’d occasionally ask, ‘What was his name? What boyfriend are you thinking of? What guy are you comparing to me in bed?’ What an ass. Heteronormativity saved your life, Trish Walker.”

“I’m sorry,” Trish said.

“Don’t be.” Jessica got to her feet. “I know I’m the one who left.” She reached out her hand.

Trish took it.

***

Trish drank coffee. Jessica explored the bookcases. “There’s a lot of comic books here.”

“Any of your little friends?”

Jessica grinned. “It’s all DC. Can you believe that?”

“Perfect for your Batman fetish.”

“I don’t have a--” Jessica chose to ignore her and settled in with a copy of _52._

“How are we going to get out of here?”

“Reading.”

“Maybe by the lake?”

Jessica looked up, glowering. “The screaming hasn’t stopped, Trish.”

Trish folded her arms. “I’m going to go look for a map.”

Jessica flicked her off.

***

Trish was heating up chicken noodle soup when Jessica called her back.

“Trish, this dude just got eaten by a crocodile.” Jessica waved the comic book at her when Trish entered the room. “It’s hilarious.”

Jessica was rocking back and forth on the couch, still trembling. Her skin looked blue. Her eyes hollow. But alive.

Trish sat down beside her.

“T-Trish,” Jessica said, and then bit her lip. 

“Yeah? Want to show me the crocodile?”

Jessica shook her head and yanked the comic book away. “Trish. Do you wish I were different?”

“Different?”

“Not… this.” Jessica gestured at herself.

Trish chuckled. “Yeah, maybe when I was fourteen.”

“Trish, come on.”

“No. You saved me and you shared your secret with me, you came out to me, and… I saw you. All of you, in that instant. I already knew all of your annoying and frustrating and evil parts. But then I saw the rest of you. That girl that was just waiting for her family to remember where they put her.”

Jessica took a deep breath. 

“I saw your heart, Jessica. You knew all of my annoying and frustrating and evil parts, too, and you wanted to protect me.”

“Then what happened between us?”

Trish searched Jessica’s face, saw glassy eyes and the vulnerability behind them. The openness and expectation that was almost never there. It made her sad, how much she would miss that expression when it was gone again.

“You never saw me that way, Jessica. You filled in the gaps in me with your own ideas, with rumors, with stereotypes and bullshit and whatever. Instead of with me.”

“Yeah,” Jessica said. She squinted. “You think that thing in me is in you.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m afraid.” Jessica shook. 

“Of what?”

“What if it isn’t there, after all?”

“Look.”

Jessica looked, steadily and for a long time, and reached up to touch Trish’s face.

Trish leaned in toward Jessica’s lips.

Jessica turned away. “Don’t.”

“Sorry,” Trish said.

“It’s okay,” Jessica said, her hand still on Trish’s cheek, caressing. “I need a drink.”

“You’re still screaming.”

“I need to wash his taste out of my mouth. Before I--He’s still there. He’ll always be there.”

“So will I,” Trish said.

Jessica shifted, and curled into Trish, closing her eyes. She quivered all over, but she was warm. Trish patted her hair.

“Don’t you have your own shit to deal with? Or something? Some appointment? Some phone call? Some faux boyfriend?”

“I’m working through it,” Trish said.

“Let me know if you figure it out.”

***

Jessica sat at the kitchen table, writing a time down. “Which one was that again?”

“American Airlines,” Trish said.

“We have binoculars, but no booze. I hate this house.”

Trish chuckled.

Jessica scanned her list. “So that’s eight planes a day. That’s a lot of fucking planes.”

“Are you going to put a big S. O. S. sign in the yard?”

“I don’t think they’d see it. I have a better idea.” Jessica gave Trish a radiant smile.

Trish’s face fell in response. “It’s something illegal, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But it’ll work.”

“I trust you,” Trish said.

“Well, that’s dumb.”

***

Jessica fought sleep. She sat cross-legged on the bed, fully clothed, even shoes, while Trish slept beside her. Let Trish sleep, until Jessica could no longer hold back the screams. Her lips were raw from biting. Her hands ached from clenching. 

Inside her mind there was only horror. The hallucinations had faded, but the memories remained. Not of what happened, but of how it made her feel. Helpless. If she slept, she would be helpless again. He could come in the night and--

“Birch Street, Birch Street.” She was chanting.

The phone played tracks from _Beautiful_. Carole King was supposed to be soothing and melancholy, but it wasn’t working. Better _Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson_ or _American Idiot_ or something. 

_... I don't need sunny skies for thing I have to do. 'Cause I stay home the whole day long and think of you…_

“Apt,” Jessica said, and scowled at the glow of the phone.

There was a strange energy in her. Usually deadened by alcohol, she felt physically alive. She got up and paced, trying not to stomp. The nerve-endings danced and the muscles worked and breathing was so much easier, even though her throat was swollen. She felt like she could do anything. But she was trapped in this house. 

Trapped and alive. Better to be free and half-dead. 

“They say,” she told a sleeping Trish, “That the danger of suicide increases as you get better. Because you get stronger. Strong enough to--”

Jessica sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Strong enough to what, Jessica?” she asked herself. Killgrave was dead. 

She was alive and Killgrave was dead, that had to be a beginning.

She screamed. 

*** 

The power cut off at three a.m. The silence was even more foreboding. Jessica, groggy, bloodshot,, got up to turn off the cheery phone. 

_... They say that I won't last too long on Broadway. I'll catch a Greyhound bus for home they all say…_

“Tomorrow,” whispered. 

She climbed into bed with Trish, taking the sleeping woman into her arms. She was close enough to hear Trish’s breath and feel the pulse under her skin. 

It helped.

***

Breakfast was peanut butter and jelly. After that, they extracted the dregs of gasoline from the generator tank and motors in the shed, and wondered what to do with it.

Then Jessica sat on the sunny, cold porch with her list of airplane flyovers and her laser pointer.

“How many planes do you think you have to hit?” Trish asked, bringing her a glass of water.

“Three or four should get the feds--er, Mounties--involved. So that it’s not just some crazy pilot. We have to be aggressive.”

“Sounds great.”

“We are also taking all other ideas.”

“Walk to the lake, walk south.” 

Jessica nodded. “If that’s our only way out. But I’d prefer a ride.”

Trish turned her face the sun and smiled.

They heard the first plane before the saw it, on its arc to fly over the Arctic and take the quick route to Europe. Jessica aimed her laser at the sky.

Trish lifted a mirror. 

They flashed lights until the plane vanished over the horizon.

***

At dusk the faint rumbling of a helicopter floated through the house.

Jessica ran to the porch. “How will they find us in the dark?”

Trish jogged past her to get the gasoline can. “Jess. You have to trust me.”

“With my life,” Jessica said.

“Well, that’s dumb.” Trish smiled at her. Then she walked into the house and began pouring gasoline onto the walls of the living room.

“Shit,” Jessica said.

***

The flames shot through the roof. Most of the first floor had burned and the second floor collapsed into it. The sky gleamed orange overhead. 

Trish and Jessica stood together on the lawn, surrounded by rescued food, heavy clothing, tools, and blankets. They were both sweating from the heat, and watching the house instead of the darkness.

They couldn’t hear the helicopter over the sound of the fire. The house had gone up quickly. The flames had reached through the windows to the roof 35 minutes after they started it. 

But Canada was vast. 

“Maybe a neighbor will call it in,” Jessica said.

“They’d be better able to see the smoke during the day. Perhaps I was rash.”

“Perhaps you were rash,” Jessica said.

“Don’t mock me. You could have blinded a pilot.”

“And I’ll feel bad about that when I’m in my city again.”

“Jessica. I have life insurance. You wouldn’t--” 

“God, shut up, Trish.”

Trish glanced at Jessica. Jessica stepped closer and took her hand. “Burning down our house isn’t fatalistic, it’s just dramatic.”

“You’ve survived a lot,” Trish said.

“Like a cockroach.”

Searchlights appeared, white against the black and orange ground. 

“Shit, the feds!” Jessica said.

Trish and Jessica followed their plan, kneeling next to each other on a blanket, their hands clasped behind their heads.

An eternity passed before a black helicopter landed near Ruben’s copse at the edge of their lawn. 

Jessica’s legs were stiff from pressing into the hard, cold ground.

Trish groaned. “God, could they hurry up?”

Two men got out of the helicopter. Neither seemed armed.

“They’re not wearing red,” Jessica said.

“That’s just for special occasions.”

“What do you think this is?”

One of the men shouted, “On the ground, please.”

“He said please,” Jessica said, as she lowered herself face-first to the ground and kept her hands at her sides.

“Try to get him to say ‘about,’ Trish said.

“On it.”

The men handcuffed Jessica and Trish behind their backs, and then, rather gently, helped them to their feet.

“Ladies, have you been shining lasers at airplanes?”

“Lawyer,” Jessica said.

“I’m Inspector Murphy and this is Sergeant Lance,” the man in charge said.

“I’m Trish Walker. Patricia Walker,” Trish said.

Jessica sighed. “Jessica Jones.”

Murphy nodded at Lance. Lance went back to the helicopter, turned off its engine, and got onto the radio.

“My lawyer’s card is in my front jacket pocket,” Jessica said. “Along with my private investigator’s license.”

“Do you own this property?”

Trish shook her head.

Jessica sighed. “I should also inform you there’s a dead body over by your helicopter. Just beyond the tree line.” 

“And how did he come to be deceased, Ms. Jones?” 

“Lawyer.”

“You mean ‘barrister,’” Murphy said amiably. 

Sergeant Lance returned. “Patricia Walker is a missing person from the United States. FBI and SHIELD both have rewards out for her.”

Murphy nodded. 

“Jessica Jones has a long arrest record.”

Jessica sighed.

“Disorderly conduct. Aggravated assault. Breaking and entering...” 

Murphy squinted at Jessica.

She mustered a polite smile.

Murphy took Trish’s arm and guided her away about fifteen meters, and questioned her.

Jessica turned the smile on Lance.

“Says you’ve got powers,” Lance said.

“I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

Lance nodded.

Murphy and Trish returned. Trish had been uncuffed, and was rubbing her wrists.

“Ms. Walker claims you did not kidnap her and hold her for ransom,” Murphy said.

“I didn’t.” 

“Sergeant, get some photographs of the body. It’ll keep til morning. Let’s escort these two ladies back to civilization.”

“Do you guys have anything to drink?” Jessica asked.

Trish rolled her eyes.

***

The helicopter covered endless swaths of white and pine and dark. More than they could have traversed in days. The smoke followed them, rising a thousand feet into the sky. A signal, a homing beacon. It had saved them.

Jessica was cold inside the helicopter. Trish held her hand and huddled against her. It wasn't helping as much as reminding her that she was cold.

There were no bars on her phone.

Freed, Trish’s wary eyes had taken on their more familiar look of superiority and intelligence. Jessica hadn’t recovered as easily.

All she could think of was her next drink.

She hated herself for it, but what else was new.

“I hate myself,” she said.

“You saved me,” Trish said.

“I’m thirsty,” Jessica said, letting the whine creep into her voice. 

Trish had set a house on fire for her. Would she find vodka for her?

“I know,” Trish said.

“I can take a punch, sure. I can fucking fly. But this weakness, it comes from inside me.”

“It’s not weakness.”

“Trish—“

“It’s not. It’s not kryptonite. It’s just living.”

Jessica rolled her neck back and gazed at the roof. “I think… I wonder… if it’s just Killgrave screaming so he’ll get me to do this. Like, he controls this as much as anything else.”

“He doesn’t.”

“If he doesn’t, and I can’t…” Jessica sighed.

“If you’re ready, we’ll get you into the best hospital in the city.”

“I’m not ready.”

Trish squeezed her hand.

Jessica lifted their linked fingers and kissed Trish’s knuckles. She pressed a prayer of forgiveness to their joined skin. She looked forward to getting home. 

***

The Toronto Pearson International Airport bustled around them. Jessica, one wrist handcuffed to a chair, sat in Homeland Security’s posh, secure room for terrorists. 

After the helicopter ride had taken them to Moosejaw, they’d gotten to shower and change into clothes and make phone calls. Trish had cried through a lot of hers on Jessica’s borrowed phone. Jessica managed to keep it together with Hogarth, but when she heard Malcolm’s voice, her sight blurred. 

After her two calls, she’d told Trish she needed more friends.

Trish had given her a pat.

Now, Trish danced through the secure door with a box of Johnny Walker Blue. “Duty free.”

“Jesus, Trish, did you buy the most expensive thing in the store?”

“Yes.” Trish nodded to their guard, who acquired two plastic cups for them.

“I don’t need a glass,” Jessica said.

“Please don’t embarrass me.”

Jessica snorted. She tried to remain patient, squirming, as Trish freed the bottle from its decorative case, opened it, and poured four healthy fingers into each cup--as much as the cups would hold.

Jessica held hers for a while, staring at it. Smelling it.

“You don’t have to,” Trish said.

“I want to be the person that says no. But I’m not strong enough.” Jessica took a tiny sip.

“It’s not about being strong,” Trish said. “I told you.”

“No?” Jessica glanced at her, took another tiny sip. Too smooth. Should’ve gone for Wild Turkey.

“It’s about feeling safe.”

Jessica took a deep breath and rested the cup on her knee. She asked, “Do you think I won’t get better? That I’ll always be like this? That Killgrave did this to me and I’ll always be like this? Until I—“ She didn’t say _die._

Trish looked away. Took her own drink.

“I’ve always been like this,” Jessica said. 

She had killed her family, and before she did that, she was a little shit. Killgrave was Retribution. Justice for her misdeeds. A lesson to be learned. 

“I’ve known you a long time,” Trish said, looking back.

“Yeah?”

“You’re getting better.”

Jessica nodded. Took a long, full drink. Half the cup. Shut her eyes as the image of Killgrave faded to its usual purple blur. When she opened her eyes, Trish was still clear and in focus. Jessica exhaled. She put her cup down and took Trish’s face in her hands.

Trish smiled.

Jessica kissed the smile, adding her own, and Trish kissed her back with a remembered sweetness that mingled with the whiskey. Jessica caressed Trish’s ear, and Trish laughed and kissed her jaw.

“Oh for God’s sake,” came Jeri Hogarth’s voice.

The women looked up as Jeri strode in with Rachel Raines.

“That’s my producer,” Trish said, leaping up and hugging Rachel tightly. Rachel began to weep.

Jessica turned her grin on Jeri, jangling her handcuffed wrist.

“Don’t give me that, you fucking hero. Can we have her uncuffed, please?”

“The property damage--” Lance said, coming in from the other room.

“Already paid for by our firm and the victim’s fund. That’s the Hero of Hell’s Kitchen you have cuffed there.”

Jessica jangled again.

Lance sighed and uncuffed her. Jessica got up and was hugged by Jeri, and then refused Rachel’s sobbing face coming near her.

“Why’d you bring her?” Jessica asked.

Jeri shrugged. “Trish said it would be okay. So I said okay.”

“Oh,’ Trish said,’” Jessica said.

“She’s a hellcat.”

Jessica smirked. 

“We set up an interview,” Rachel said. “Exclusive, with photos. Just of Trish,” she added quickly, as if fearing Jessica might strike her.

Jessica grunted.

“15k,” Trish said. 

“They offered ten more if you’d be in a picture,” Jeri said.

Jessica shook her head. “No way.”

“Whatever. You’re going to be in all the papers.”

Jessica poured herself another drink.

Jeri’s eyes widened at the blue label. “Can I have one of those?”

“Party all around. Jessica saves the day.” Jessica gestured. Lance sighed and got a plastic cup, pretending it wasn’t his job or whatever. 

Trish slunk back to Jessica’s side, asked, “I’m a burden, aren’t I? All this?”

Jessica thought of the helicopter. “Like a heavy coat against the cold.”

Trish hugged her tightly. 

Lance got a text. He was pulling out his phone when Jeri got a text. 

“Edgar Harrison arrested in Philadelphia,” Lance said.

Jeri smirked.

Trish began to cry. 

***

Jessica woke with a start. She was wrapped around Trish, her hand settled on Trish’s hip, Trish’s curves fitting neatly into hers. Her face was pressed into Trish’s hair. She twisted, checking for drool, was satisfied on that account. She yawned. 

It was dark in Trish’s bedroom. Only the green LEDs of the emergency panel illuminated anything. Trish had closed blackout curtains--No need to look at the city if Jessica wasn’t in it, she’d said.

Jessica tried to calm her pounding heart. The purple dream was still lingering in her peripheral vision. No point in going back to sleep soon. 

She hated waking up like this. Half-sober. Thinking only about a drink when she had Trish in her arms. Big spoon. Protective. 

Like she should have been in Canada. They should have been like this, sex and snuggling and safety, not all the screaming. Bitterness filled Jessica’s mouth. She pressed her nose back to Trish’s hair and inhaled deeply. 

Trish stretched; settled. Murmured, “You’re awake.”

“Mm,” Jessica said. 

Trish turned over, facing her in the dark. Breathing gently against her chin. “Hey.”

Jessica gave her a drowsy kiss. 

“Bad dream?” Trish asked.

“Always. You?”

“Yes,” Trish said.

“Want to talk about it?” Jessica asked.

“Canada.” Then, “Edgar.”

“Tell me about him,” Jessica said.

Trish pursed her lips and gathered her thoughts. She’d probably been forming the words for weeks. Words for a living, her own words, never reading from someone else’s script again. Never having someone put words in her mouth.

“I was scared,” Trish said. “And so angry. All my precautions, all my fighting, and these two men just… took me. Took all of that away from me. I didn’t even have a chance. Didn’t throw a punch. I was furious at the universe, for that. At you, for being right. At New York, for not saving me. At Edgar and Ruben, for being craven. And that sustained me.”

“Sustained you?”

“Kept me from… screaming.”

“Yeah,” Jessica said.

“I just took it. And the longer I took it, the longer I shit in that bucket and snarled at their taunts and flinched from their touches… the stronger I felt. _Enduring_ was strength. Surviving was strength.”

Jessica nodded, but must have failed at keeping the sadness from her expression, because Trish disentangled enough to cup Jessica’s face in her palm. “I had a choice. I could take it or scream or die. I was in control.”

Jessica pressed her forehead to Trish’s. 

Trish said, “Then, you came. And I felt like I had earned it. The more time passed, the more likely I would be alive and ready for rescue. When Ruben started to get restless, when the routine changed, I knew it was because of you.”

“Always will be,” Jessica said.

“I know.”

Jessica closed her eyes as they kissed. The bed creaked as Trish slid over her. She tried to block out all other needs, all fears, all impulses, and surrender. Her heart began to pound again. For the next few minutes she could take a break from being her. She’d be Trish’s, instead.

“You know what Killgrave’s problem was?” Jessica asked, now that Killgrave was just some dead dude again, rather than a demon.

“Hm?” Trish said.

“He wasn’t happy. All his fucking mind control and free sex and money and he wasn’t happy. He liked me--he loved me--because I wasn’t happy, too. He saw that in me. But then he...he forced me to be happy. Like, if he could make me happy, never mind the mind control, then he accomplished something. I was like, an experiment. A triumph. But it didn’t make him happy.”

“Interesting,” Trish said, running her fingers through Jessica’s hair.

Jessica took a deep breath. “I can tell I make you happy. When I walk in a room, you light up.”

Trish smiled.

“And.”

Trish nodded. “And?”

“You don’t need me to be happy for you. You don’t need me to dance for you. You just need me to be alive. And here I am.” Jessica gave a little laugh.

Trish’s eyes filled with tears. 

Jessica said, “You’re the exact opposite of Killgrave.”

“I love you, Jessica.”

Jessica grinned, lopsided. “You too.”


End file.
